yes of course there are always exceptions and differences of opinion. if Ken wants to use PS that up to him to decide its usefulness, but coming from decades of photography I find PS too limiting for astrophotography. Hugin is by far the best stitching software I've ever used but it can take a bit of work. Depending on what you want to do there are better more technically accurate tools than PS, either way YOU still have to work at it, they don't read you mind and take a jumble of data to produce an image putting Hubble to shame. ICE just gives fantastic results so much faster, just because its microsoft doesn't make it bad in any way and there is no reason windows people shouldn't use it, even if you want to treat it as a preview to make sure your mosaic fits before dedicating the time/effort aligning in another program.
Being partially disabled now I have had to adjust how I capture for the gear I have and can use and try to get the best I can out of what I have. I do use PS when its the right tool for the task (like the transit of venus) its just not a panorama/mosaic specialist tool though. Ken is smart, he'll find what he needs. I still like a table top jigsaw of 6x4 prints to build up an image
